


The Third Morning

by gnomesb4trolls



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Aslan jerked those kids around and its not ok, Everything is still really sad though, Gen, Susan Pevensie Never Forgot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-25 11:55:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17120894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gnomesb4trolls/pseuds/gnomesb4trolls
Summary: That time I wrote an au where nobody dies and yet somehow it's still super sad....Happy December, everyone. Thank you to everyone who's read my previous fics--I've felt seen this year because of you.





	The Third Morning

They act as if she just stopped believing one day, but it’s not like that. 

She thinks about this, sitting on the windowsill of her tiny flat with her tea already cooling, watching the rising sun paint the London roofs. Sometimes her thirst for open spaces is more than she can bear: that’s why she took this flat, even though it’s small and cold, because it’s on the top floor and at least she can see the sky. 

She never cared about open spaces, before. 

This is the thing that her siblings can’t seem to understand, or maybe don’t want to: Narnia wasn’t just given to them. Maybe it was at first, when they were children blundering through a door without knowing what it would lead to, but they grew up, probably even faster than they would have in this world. They gave Narnia their childhoods, all of that youthful hope and energy, the belief that they could be the ones to make things right. 

Susan’s been tired since the day that they stumbled back into England and she woke up in a child’s body, and she knows that they all feel it too, even if they don’t want to admit it. 

She looks at Edmund sometimes and wonders how much of his blood rests in Narnian soil, the price of another war that he didn’t choose. Coming back had been harder on him than on any of them, in some ways: he’d met the ghost of his former self outside the wardrobe, the child who’d been in so much pain that he’d wanted to believe the White Witch’s promises. She’d watched him climb out of that skin all over again, this time without magic. He used to make the trek to the girls’ school on the weekends, when they would let him, sitting stiffly in the hard chair in her dorm room while she made him tea and didn’t ask what hurt because she knew that the answer was everything. 

Peter had buried himself in his studies so thoroughly that it had become almost impossible to pull him out; Lucy had worn herself out trying to right every schoolyard injustice, because she hadn’t known what else to do. They’ve all had their wars to fight, since they came back, but Susan’s the only one who seems to understand that it didn’t have to be that way. 

Belief isn’t just about accepting that something is real: of course she knows that Narnia is real. She knows that better than she knows anything else, knows it in her bones and her blood, in the old wounds that don’t ache anymore because sending them back took away the scars that they should have had. She knows. She just doesn’t trust. 

When they ask her to come with them, the three of them together for the first time in she can’t remember how long, she gets the familiar sick feeling in her gut. They’re just going to get together with the others and talk, they say, but she knows. She can feel that something—or someone—is about to yank on that thread, to call them back one last time. She wants to go with them, more than she’s ever wanted anything, and that’s why she can’t. 

Edmund lingers after the other two have left, a dark bulk at her shoulder. She’s sitting at her dressing table: she always sits there, that’s probably why they think she’s vain, but it’s easier to have these conversations with only the parts of their faces that she can see in the mirror. For him, though, she turns around. 

“You feel it too, don’t you?” 

“Yes.” 

“There’s something happening over there.” He’s standing, but he doesn’t fidget: Narnia taught him to hold himself still. 

“Yes.” She sighs. “I know. I know that they need us. But I just can’t, Ed.” She’s thinking of what it was like when they came back after Caspian. The grief of having seen Narnia again, yet so changed, made it that much worse than the first time: none of them had gotten out of bed for days. She still dreams, sometimes, about the ruins of Cair Paravel, that damn golden chess piece.

“I know.”

She looks up at him. When did he get so tall? He was barely at eye level with her, before: she gets distracted for a second, trying to remember which before she’s thinking of. “You don’t have to go, either.” You can forgive yourself, finally. You can stay here, where it’s safe. 

“I know.” He sighs, and his stillness crumples. One of his hands strays to his side, to the place where he’d once had a scar from that very first battle. His body remembers, just as hers does. Even if she ignores the tug of the line, the hook is still there. 

She stands up. She holds out her arms and waits for his nod, then hugs him, tight, tight, trying to tell him everything she can’t say. For a second, when they pull apart and meet each other’s eyes, they’re Queen Susan and King Edmund again. It’s the closest she’s felt to whole in a long time. 

“Come back,” she says. 

On the second morning after they’ve left, she wakes from a nightmare: a wrenching crash, the smell of metal and blood. She turns on a lamp in the dark and makes coffee with shaking hands, settles on the windowsill even though the sun’s not up yet and the cold seeps into her bones. She feels that sick twist in her stomach again: she should be with them. She may not be a part of Narnia anymore, but she’s a part of them, and they need her. 

Once the coffee has had a chance to kick in, she knows that nothing’s changed. She hates that she has to choose herself, over and over again, over everything else she’s ever loved. She hates that she can be safe, but not whole. 

Damn you, Aslan. 

On the third morning, the morning they’re due back, she wakes in the dark again. She puts on her coat and goes outside, walking the chilly London streets until gray dawn seeps between the buildings. She walks until she’s so exhausted that she could go right back to bed again. 

She knows as soon as she sets foot on the last flight of stairs that there’s someone inside her flat. She takes a breath, and then another step: whatever fate waits for her, at least she chose it this time. 

Edmund’s sitting on her windowsill, shoulders hunched in the overcoat that he hasn’t taken off. He’s lit the lamp, and in the sickly electric light she can tell that he’s older, just not by how much. 

“I understand now,” he says.


End file.
